The role and significance of magnetic resonance imaging and miRNA-125b expression level in diagnosis of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

INTRODUCTION: Diagnosis of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is an important challenge for clinicians, and finding new approaches to better diagnosis is the basis of a new area of cancer research. AIM: To investigate the diagnostic value and significance of MRI combined with miRNA-125 expression in head and neck SCC. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Sixty patients with head and neck SCC were selected as the tumour group, and 20 healthy volunteers as the control group. All subjects were examined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) perfusion imaging. Peripheral venous blood was collected from all patients and healthy volunteers. The expression level of miRNA-125 in serum was detected by RT-qPCR, and the levels of interleukin-2 (IL-2), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interferon-γ (IFN-γ), and transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) in serum were detected. Meanwhile, tumour tissues and adjacent non-tumour tissues of patients were collected to detect the mRNA expression level of ERBB2. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, the expression level of miRNA-125b in serum of patients decreased with a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05). Compared with adjacent non-tumour tissues, the expression level of ERBB2 mRNA in tumour tissues of patients was significantly increased, with a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05). MiRNA-125b in serum was negatively correlated with tumour size and number of metastatic foci (p < 0.05). The results of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay showed that the levels of IL-2, TNF-α, and TGF-β1 in the patient’s serum increased while the levels of IFN-γ decreased significantly, with a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Detection of miRNA-125b expression level is complementary to MRI diagnosis of head and neck SCC.